Teaching Qualifications and Teaching Assignments: How They Influence Teachers' Professional Development Choices

Authors: Abigail Jurist Levy, Tzur Karelitz, Erica Fields, Audrey Martinez-Gudapakkam, Erica Jablonski

We hypothesized that, in an environment where teachers' assignments shift from year to year, regardless of experience, teachers assigned to teach subjects outside their area of licensure were more likely to engage in professional development that emphasized the science content (i.e., BSP's contextualized content courses - CCCs) that corresponded to their out-of-licensure assignments. We also anticipated that teachers with less experience were more likely to engage in professional development that emphasized pedagogy (i.e., BSP's collaborative coaching and learning in science model - CCLS). With these hypotheses in mind, we addressed the following research questions:

1. What is the status of the qualifications of teachers of science in Boston?
2. What role do teachers have in the teaching assignment decision process?
3. What characterizes teachers' experiences teaching out of licensure?
4. What factors influence teachers' engagement in professional development in general and BSP in particular?
5. What is the relationship between teachers' experience, out-of-licensure assignments, and their engagement in BSP's contextualized content courses (CCCs) and collaborative coaching and learning in science cycles (CCLS)?